ToS;DR — TL;DR for Terms of Service and Privacy Policy - <AUTHOR> http://www.tos-dr.info <comment><USER2> I'd be very careful counting the requirements for cookies as a bad thing (as seen in the github section):

First-Party session cookies are a totally valid use of cookies and actually help improving the security in that a session-id in a cookie will never be copy & pasted by accident (it happens to URL-based session-id's at times) and cookies can be marked as both httponly and secure, making it more difficult to impossible (depending on browser) to XSS the session-id away.

As such I would actually go as far as to _prefer_ a site that requires (first- party session) cookies to one that doesn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. The whole explanation can be found about cookies can be found here. Tell us what you think!

<http://tos-dr.info/topics.html#cookies>

> 5 GitHub requires cookies

5: means it's a low score. So it's considered bad, but it doesn't influence very much the whole class of GitHub.

> GitHub requires cookies to work and misleads you to

> believe that you remain anonymous while cookies contain

> "unique identifiers". However, only session cookies are

> used, not persistant cookies.

The whole discussion is here [https://groups.google.com/d/topic/tosdr/gyMiAkV5ZG0/discussi...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/tosdr/gyMiAkV5ZG0/discussion)

Do you agree/disagree? We welcome contributions!

<comment><USER3> Not to be a stickler, just trying to help, but persistant is misspelled (persistent).

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all ;) thanks (not a native English speaker)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great concept and smart execution.

A suggestion - rather than rating "A" through "E" why not change to the more recognizable (for US audience at least) scale of "A through F" (A/B/C/D/F) which we're all mercilessly trained to recognize through years of school grades?

"E" as your worst rating confused me at first glance - could be interpreted as "Excellent"

<comment><USER5> I vouch for a more international 5-star system.

<comment><USER6> Yep. Especially since A/B/C/D/F is confusing to non-Americans. Here in Britain there's the Scottish and English systems, with different A-F or A-G scales.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An API and chrome addon would be very nice. I wouldn't check the site, but I would like warnings when I accessed the registration page of a bad website.

<comment><USER8> I noticed that it's under the AGPL. That might be an issue for developing a Chrome plugin.

<comment><AUTHOR> AGPL is our JS+HTML+CSS code. The data itself (JSON) is CC-BY-SA.

<comment><USER9> would it be possible to add ixquick and webchat.freenode you suggest?

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean?

<comment><USER9> To have ixquick privacy policies reviewed next to duckduck, and _contact us via IRC (the #tosdr irc channel on freenode)_ ->

      #tosdr irc channel on freenode

thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Suggestion: Include a "Under EU Data Protection law: all/some/none" category.

Companies in the EU, are required to do various things under EU data protection law. E.g. they are legally required to protect your personal data, they can only use the personal data for things you agreed to, they must tell you what data they keep on you if you ask, if they are wrong and you tell them, they are legally required to update the data, there is a national body that is legally empowered to tell a company to stop doing a thing/delete data if they are in breech of data protection law, if they suffer a data breech they are legally required to inform users, etc. All of these things are good for users.

Some companies (e.g. those entirely in the USA) are not bound by these. Some companies (e.g. those entirely in the EU) are bound by this. Some companies (e.g. Facebook) say "If you're in the US or Canada, you're under US law, if you're anyone else, you're under EU law".

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Differences between legislations is one thing that's making the task harder. I think it's better to focus to what the terms actually state. But I always keep in mind the jurisdiction under which the company operates as it can influence the meaning of the terms.

However I'd fear to get to the other extreme and to end up making a rating system saying which legislation is better than the other. It's not the scope.

One other thing: we think the terms should be self-explanatory. I don't think services should expect their users to know the EU data protection law. So it would seem smart for me that the services makes a statement about them in their terms (just like they state details about their security practices for instance).

<comment><USER11> Shouldn't "Defending your privacy in US Congress" be out of scope as well, then? It certainly isn't part of a website's terms and conditions. Plus, it's hard to judge how well those activities are going, and how committed the company is in pursuing those activities in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. I was actually unsure at the time. The data comes from the EFF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems a bit biased in places. One of the example sites has a big scary red X next to "Deleted images are not really deleted", despite that being an important feature for any site that lets users delete their own content.

It's one of those tradeoffs you make where you trade a tiny fraction of risk (e.g., that somebody might break into your system and steal the exact cat photo that one high profile blogger was embarrassed to have uploaded) so that you can have an easy fix for the dozens of emails you get each month from people who accidentally deleted the wrong photo and can't believe you deleted it even though I told you to and I'll sue you because that's ILLEGAL!

Definitely not worthy of a big red X against your site, since it's the only sensible choice.

<comment><USER13> They could let you delete deleted items permanently, like Dropbox does. Storing data you uploaded with no way to delete it does have privacy implications, since it may be looked at by people working there and could be a lot more sensitive than a cat photo.

I'd say a term that is more unfairly given a thumbs down is giving them a license to user content, since it's impractical to operate a user-generated content site without this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. But sometimes the copyright license conceded by the user goes way beyond what's needed for the service. Why do you give rights to sublicense and to transfer to Facebook or Twitter?

Details: <http://tos-dr.info/topics.html#copyright-scope>

<comment><USER14> So the developers who built apps that read your FB/Twitter stream are also licensed to show the content.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not necessary (see SoundCloud for instance). The whole problem is that the copyright license is just overbroad and not limited at all.

<comment><USER14> Partially necessary. And I completely agree with you. The licenses they demand are far broader than what they need, but that goes to the imbalance inherent in the relationship: big company with lots of money for lawyers versus some person just wanting to tell his friends what he had for lunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Some of these are a bit _too_ terse. e.g. 500px says "Ownership". What does that mean? And why is it less worrying than twitpic's "Takes credit for your content"? (And how does that make sense? Twitpic puts the username of the uploader on each page, no?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah "Ownership" is meant as a category rather than a title. I guess I forgot to give this one a proper title. Will fix this soon.

<comment><AUTHOR> The category is explained <http://tos-dr.info/topics.html#ownership> also, see <http://tos-dr.info/topics.html#copyright-scope>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It seems idealistic, but a service like this would be incredibly insightful. I only "read" (read: skim) the TOS of a select few companies (Apple, for one), so the high-level summaries shown on this landing page are immensely valuable (though the scoring system seems obtuse). Of course, now one has to worry about the objectivity of the summarizers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, trust is one problem. I think we're being objective (at least we are trying, with building a scoring system that's automatic). But for sure, we are not being neutral. We do think that tracking should always be opt-in, not opt- out.

At least, we're working in total transparency and it's an open process. I hope that helps.

<comment><USER16> Re: neutrality, I'm delighted to see that your perspectives align with mine. Dubious legal terms deserve to be called out. And the transparency is nice, but... well, if I'm too lazy to read a 50-page legal document, I hope I don't have to sift through a 50-page mailing list thread just to establish confidence in the summary of the document itself. :)

<comment><USER17> Shouldn't be much of a problem if the summaries quote relevant passages. You can just Ctrl-F and see if your intuition agrees with theirs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems like a VERY good idea! Even when i take the time to read the TOS on sites (granted, it is rare), i come away unsure that i really understand it.

This seems like an excellent way to deal with this issue too!

Thanks ToS;DR!

<comment><USER19> Brilliant idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fantastic to have. It is really hard for companies to offer simply legal terms, since any simplification starts to undermine the actual detailed terms. Awesome to have this from a third party.

I imagine this would be particularly valuable as a browser extension.

<comment><USER21> Good news: a first version of the Chrome/Chromium extension works! If you'd like to try it out you have to install it yourself at the moment, it's pretty easy though: [https://github.com/unhosted/ToS- DR/issues/11#issuecomment-76...](https://github.com/unhosted/ToS- DR/issues/11#issuecomment-7665593)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Given the purpose of the site and it's broad potential reach (and the fact that it's not a domain that requires pushing the envelope in terms of rich user experience), I was pretty suprised to see that the entire 'Rated Services' section was a giant white block in Internet Explorer 9.

I could understand lack of support for IE7 (or perhaps crappy formatting), would raise an eyebrow at lack of support for IE8 (given the nature of the domain and that there's no compelling reason for a lack of graceful fallback in this case), but lack of IE9 support is a bit... suprising.

I certainly hope the team plans on addressing this, otherwise you're cutting a large chunk of browser users out of the picture for (from what I can see) no compelling reason related to the technical requirements of the kind of content you are delivering.

<comment><USER23> that's my fault, and was definitely not intended, sorry. thanks for reporting it, i'll make sure it gets fixed somehow.

<comment><USER23> it should be fixed now hopefully

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I understand that the project welcomes contributions, but who has the final say on the rating of a website? Are there any gate-keepers, and who are they?

<comment><AUTHOR> For the moment: Anyone who can push to the 5apps.com git master branch. That is people at <http://unhosted.org>

We would be happy to get th umbrella of a non profit org like Mozilla or the EFF.

Any way, if you don't like our decision: you can get involved. Or you can fork it.

<comment><USER11> If this site gets big, its neutrality will be questioned, and you've got to be ready with answers. I don't want to see good efforts like these go to waste.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I attempted a similar feat in 2010 with the now defunct tosgrok.com. This is a very needed service!

Edit: Take the domain and put it to good use, I no longer own it and it beats tos;dr!

<comment><USER25> To be fair, neither is exactly terminology familiar with the average user, who I think they're trying to reach out to here. Both are clever, but known mostly by avid Internet users or nerds.

<comment><USER24> Certainly. But I think people who care what provisions the TOS of a service contain are the exception and not the average person.

<comment><USER25> I think one of the goals with providing brief, easy to read summaries can (and should) be expanding the number of people who care what is in the TOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> For those who have decent experience in machine learning (and NLP) and its theoretical foundations...isn't there enough examples of TOS and conventions of the "art" that a classifier could be built to determine restrictiveness and such? Not completely accurate, but even something that's 60% right would be a huge help to services like the OP's

<comment><AUTHOR> check out commonterms.net ;)

<comment><USER27> Clickable: <http://commonterms.net>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I haven't read through all the comments but standardized and unbiased copy writing would really benefit the site. "Promise to inform about data requests" gets a plus while "No transparency on law enforcement requests" get a minus.

Both labels could be changed to "Notification of data requests", and a user would have the benefit of knowing you were comparing the same thing across multiple sites.

As it stands it's hard to compare a sites rating.

Another (possibly more prominent) example: Github has "You don't grant any copyright license to github", right below that SoundCloud has "You stay in control of your copyright", and below that 500px simply has "Ownership".

Assuming those all refer to the same thing (owning your data/copyright), a simple, "Copyright ownership" would be much clearer and unbiased copy.

</comment><comment><USER29> Gravatar: No Right to leave the service. Really?

<comment><USER30> random gripe: if you use a different email on gravatar than on github, your gravatar wont show up on github.

it's becoming pretty standard, especially among techies, to have a unique email per site, so you can easily tell if a site is selling your address (or is a victim of a hack, like dropbox was).

I emailed them about it -- too bad!

<comment><USER11> You could register your different email again with Gravatar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Great initiative. Can the mere length of a TOS and it's complexity be a factor in the rating too? The crowd here may be able to somewhat grasp the legalese in a TOS. It's not fair to expect that from any normal visitor.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is a very convenient service for the users, but it might raise some issues if any of these terms are ever argued in court. Defending that you read the ToS;DR and not the terms of service might not hold much water.

<comment><USER33> I think the main value here is not in court, it's giving people a better "bird's eye view" of how a service treats you and your data. From this point, you might decide:

\- To cancel the service

\- To not join in the first place

\- To raise a collective stink about something onerous in the terms

Any of these things, in high numbers, could force a service provider to update their TOS to be more friendly. That's a pretty good outcome even if saying "but the ToS;DR said!!!" would never hold up in court or anywhere else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This has the potential to be a great educational tool and hopefully in time will reach a wide audience.

If enough people are aware of the terms it will exert pressure on providers to be more open and reasonable with their terms.

Of course whilst many free services might argue they have more leeway in imposing stricter terms, this still doesn't justify certain treatment of users.

Providing a summary of terms in a standardised manner will also make it much clearer where one particular service deviates in an unreasonable fashion.

In particular, user data and usage of third party cookies would be two categories where it would be good to get visibility.

</comment><comment><USER17> Given how open source projects are increasingly using GitHub as the canonical repository, I'm a bit disappointed that they can refuse you service for any reason at all. I want to believe that the GH guys are good people and were just lazy here.

So, +1 for tos-dr for letting me know, and a potential extra +1 if they help us get GH to change this policy. I'm going to let them know this matters to me, I hope others here will as well.

<comment><USER35> > I'm a bit disappointed that they can refuse you service for any reason at > all.

This is actually a problem with the methodology (I think): most probably, none of the service providers pledge to provide service to you, so they can all refuse service for any reason. Github should probably get credit because at least they are honest about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fair point. You can discuss this at [https://groups.google.com/d/topic/tosdr/hI5Too_uDVk/discussi...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/tosdr/hI5Too_uDVk/discussion)

I'll be happy to reply over there :) (if we spread the discussion too much, it will be lost)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I like the idea and the layout is nice.

That being said, use the same categories for each company, don't re-write the description based on how good/bad it is. It would be far more useful for creating a table (which would also be a great way to organize this information, businesses looking to improve the transparency of their ToS would need only look at top scored candidates to find inspiration).

</comment><comment><USER37> I love the color coding, makes it easy to see at a glance.

What's the plan as terms of service change over time? Some greens might become redundant.

<comment><AUTHOR> The plan is to work with the EFF's tosback <https://github.com/pde/tosback2> (they need contributors too BTW) and track changes over time so we can notify people when something wrong is going on (they'd be able to subscribe to a list of services' ToS;DR)

<comment><USER38> They should use V8 to fetch TOS so that Facebook don't get away with its latest TOS change.

<http://www.tosback.org/diff.php?vid=1740>

Yes, it's in Javascript so not crawlable by TOSBack. The TOS is obfuscated to ... protect its privacy ? So ironic coming from those who claim privacy is dead.

<comment><AUTHOR> tosback.org is no longer updated.

Yes, the facebook TOS are difficult to archive: [http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.facebook.com/leg...](http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.facebook.com/legal/privacy) issue on GH if you have a solution: <https://github.com/pde/tosback2-data/issues/1>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is awesome! It would be cool if this could be turned into a browser plugin so you could see what class site you're visiting.

<comment><USER21> A first version of the Chrome extension is ready to try out. Feel free to install it and let us know what you think! :) [https://github.com/unhosted/ToS- DR/issues/11#issuecomment-76...](https://github.com/unhosted/ToS- DR/issues/11#issuecomment-7665593)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I have been thinking about doing something similar for quite sometime now. Specifically I wanted to build a browser extension that highlights only the important parts of agreement. And the important points will in turn be decided by the community of users with the system keeping track of different versions of agreements and data of interest in it.

<comment><USER41> This is a great idea. The extension can be something like DIIGO does - highlight parts of the agreements that are deemed important or critical to consumer + provide snapshots of the TOS/Privacy policy whenever there are changes.

<comment><USER21> Heads up – we have a first version of the Chrome extension ready to try out: [https://github.com/unhosted/ToS- DR/issues/11#issuecomment-76...](https://github.com/unhosted/ToS- DR/issues/11#issuecomment-7665593)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Great idea - similar to my website that got frontpaged a few weeks ago (www.tldrlegal.com). Very well done; I will definitely be using this in the future.

<comment><USER43> you have a good site, shame this one came out too (for you!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is a side topic related (so sorry for the threadjack!):

Does anyone else think TL;DR is a terrible replacement for "Abriged:" or "Summary:"?

</comment><comment><USER45> While checking this out I wondered whether there exists a service for generating ToS. Does that exist?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. <https://github.com/flamsmark/privacy-policy-template> & [http://blog.docracy.com/post/27931026976/an-open-source- priv...](http://blog.docracy.com/post/27931026976/an-open-source-privacy- policy-for-mobile-apps)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Yay! This I have been waiting for.

</comment><comment><USER47> Would love an extension that showed a summary of a site's ToS on the sign-up page.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER49> Too long introduction; didn't Read

</comment><comment><USER50> My preferred ToS:

Be nice.

</comment><comment><USER51> Still don't want to read it.</comment>


Newspapers slam ex-Mozilla CEO's new ad-blocking browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/newspaper-publishers-send-cease-and-desist-to-brave-browser-2016-4?r=US&IR=T <comment><USER2> The argument against ad-blocking is that the content-creators don't get paid for their content. But, honest question: who cares!?

If you push out content and you can't make money on it without ads, then that content didn't need to be created in the first place. The argument then devolves to "there won't be any good content" but I'll _gladly_ roll the dice on that world to see what we're left with.

Ads, to me, represent a monetization strategy rooted in "I did something, and you're looking at, so I deserve to get paid" but that makes no sense. The disconnect here is the presumption that the content has any value to begin with. I think what scares traditional content-creators is the idea that the vast majority of content has no inherent value.

<comment><USER3> _If you push out content and you can 't make money on it without ads, then that content didn't need to be created in the first place. The argument then devolves to "there won't be any good content" but I'll _gladly_ roll the dice on that world to see what we're left with._

It'd be interesting to see if that's true for very many people. As an experiment, we could take a fork of good quality ad-blocker and change the way that it works so that rather than blocking the advert content when it detects an ad on a page it blocks the entire page.

That way users who don't want to reward content creators with money from adverts would no longer see the content they're refusing to pay for. And if the content creator gives users the option to pay instead of seeing adverts then a simple direct payment would make the site work because the ad blocker would no longer block anything.

I'm actually tempted to give that a try to see what impact it has on my browsing.

<comment><USER4> Forbes implemented this and so far none of their articles were worth reopening in an ad block enabled browser for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What I don't understand is how Brave expects to gain a userbase. It's a Chromium fork with an ad-blocking/replacing scheme. If a user wanted to install an adblocker, why wouldn't they simply install an adblocker which removes all ads instead of an entirely separate browser which still has ads that some third party has deemed acceptable? It's not like the Brave scheme has any moral high ground here to appeal to; it's not a unique scheme and when others have tried it it generally wasn't received well[0].

I simply can't come up with a way in which Brave wins market share.

[0] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/why-comcasts- java...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/why-comcasts-javascript- ad-injections-threaten-security-net-neutrality/)

<comment><USER6> Aren't they paying users a cut of the ad revenue?

<comment><USER7> Do you think advertisers are going to be that interested in paying the people looking at their ads? I just don't see how that will work in the long run.

<comment><USER6> From what I understand, advertisers aren't paying the users of Brave. Brave is paying the users.

Advertisers pay Brave (just as they would pay any other ad network, I guess?) Brave then slices that money up giving a % to the content publisher, a % to the user, and keeping a % for themselves.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, but if advertisers pay Brave knowing Brave pays viewers, then the advertisers know they are paying users at the end of the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I must say that I have nothing against ads in general, but I am fiercely against the ads that are predatory in their nature.

This includes the ads that rely on the network of global surveillance of every web user actions in the Internet,

this includes the ads what main indention is to disrupt and control the main flow of the user who perceives the Internet mainly as the reading medium,

and obviously everything that is clearly malicious including direct malware attacks through the ad systems to the more subtle malicious attempts to market products or services that are attacking users sexual, financial or emotional integrity.

<comment><USER9> What kind of ads aren't "predatory in their nature"?

The only kind I can think of is uncompensated word-of-mouth recommendations based on prior good experiences. But I don't really consider that "advertising", as it isn't the beneficiary itself causing this promotion to happen.

<comment><USER8> I think there is a sense of truth in what you are saying, but I think that is not completely black and white.

For example honest product advertisements can be described as non-predatory.

I also think that magazine ads are an order of less predatory compared to the TV ads because you are not forced to perceive them.

Google ads many years ago without all reaching Google Analyse and other Google whole web tracking projects were at least two orders less predatory than Google ads today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is his business model any different to me selling my own dish, intercepting Dishtv/satellite streams, redirecting it to my users and inserting my own ads in place of the ones already being shown?

<comment><USER11> Actually, yeah, it is. A better analogy is TVs.

For years, everyone has been hooking up their own TVs (browsers) to their service (internet) and have had to watch and listen to really noisy, distracting ads that subtract from their experience (web ads that track, reduce performance, and are really distracting).

Recently, some people came up with interceptor boxes and DVRs (extensions) that let you either silence and block out ads or record what you want to watch and play it back while skipping ads. Many people loved this and started actively using them.

Now someone came up with a new TV (Eich's browser) that automatically removes ads and replaces them with quieter, less distracting ads. That's all it is.

Until today, I didn't know that Brave was available on other platforms, since I only use it on Android (it replaced an app I was previously using, link bubble). I gotta admit it's pretty decent, although it's unlikely that I'll be using it to replace my usual desktop combo of Google Chrome + uBlock Origin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Businesses who expose their users to malware and harm via infected ads they choose not to screen or vet in-house, complain when those same users take steps to protect themselves.

Maybe we need to change the terminology: "I use a browser condom to prevent ad STDs from the various glory hole, sorry, glorious content, sites I frequent".

<comment><USER13> I hate to break it to you, but Brave has a nice big Limitation of Liability section in their terms of use that completely exempts them from liability for any malicious ads they might insert into web pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> From the response [https://www.brave.com/blogpost_4.html](https://www.brave.com/blogpost_4.html)

> Brave is not, as the NAA asserts, "replac[ing] publishers' ads on the > publishers' own websites and mobile applications with Brave's own > advertising." We do not tamper with any first-party publisher content, > including native ads that do not use third-party tracking.

Is this a refutation or an evasion? Does Brave replace 3rdparty tracking ads?

I fired up brave and visited a few sites - I don't see any ads at all...

</comment><comment><USER15> Using Brave is almost as dumb as not using an ad blocker at all from a security perspective unless Eich has a plan to 100% eliminate malware, something I'd be extremely sceptical about. I don't see how his malware is going to be different from the regular malware in ads currently. Now where is the full list of newspapers because I'm interested in actively avoiding their content due to this obviously political (and extremely disgusting and greedy) move.

<comment><USER16> Pretty easy. Strip all script tags from ad markup.

<comment><USER15> Unfortunately, that won't even get rid of all XSS or Javascript, so it won't work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cry me a river. Publishers and ad companies deserve everything they're getting and more.

<comment><USER18> In their current guise I couldn't agree more.

They created a corrupt model that serves them at the expense of the users and then act aggrieved when the users retaliate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd like to see a copyright attorney weigh in on the NAA's claims. There seems to be an analogy between what Brave is doing and ClearPlay/CleanFlicks. ClearPlay offers filters based on tagging offensive frames in films. Congress amended copyright law to bless this as lawful.

</comment><comment><USER20> The advertisings _must_ change their business model. They should follow the models used by content providers on Cable. I pay Verizon an enormous amount of money each month for the "pipe" as do others pay high fees for cellular phone providers. The content providers should get a portion of the excessively high amount of money I pay to Verizon to pay for their content.

</comment><comment><USER21> It seems that most people in the comments haven't actually read the article as the complaint seems to not be about ad-blocking but about the browser replacing ads with its own.

What would the argument for this being OK be?

Also as an aside, it seems insane to me that people are comparing the ad- blocking to having others decide what you can and cannot read, and that it is somehow a violation of advertisers freedom.

<comment><USER22> > What would the argument for this being OK be?

What would be the argument that it's not okay? To me your argument is like saying that it's okay to buy a book and draw on the cover with a green pen, but not okay to draw on the cover with a red pen. If I bought the book, I can modify it how I want; the colour of ink I use shouldn't matter.

<comment><USER21> I think the user should have the right to choose what, and how, content is displayed.

With that being said, I think it is morally dubious for a browser to inject ads. Regardless of the privacy concerns, I don't think anyone should profit at the direct costs of others.

I think your physical comparison fails as it tries to equate a right to something that is moral. And sometimes they are different.

<comment><USER22> > I don't think anyone should profit at the direct costs of others.

Does this mean it's immoral for me to donate $5 to my favourite ad blocking extension author? After all, the author is now profiting at the expense of the publisher.

Similarly, is it immoral for me to sign up for a service which injects _additional_ ads in exchange for a fee, if I so choose? If not, does it become immoral in your eyes for me to also run an ad blocker which blocks the normal ads? Or is it important that the ad injection browser extension be written by a different person than the ad blocking browser extension? Considering that Brave is (I imagine) not turning a profit, does that mean their service is okay until they become profitable, then becomes immoral?

> I think your physical comparison fails as it tries to equate a right to > something that is moral. And sometimes they are different.

I am discussing morality in both cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In the world of multi billion dollar ad industry literally controlling the contents in www, it is truly brave effort, or blackmailing based monetization. Remember Ad block plus whiltelisting ads after getting paid?

</comment><comment><USER24> It's very odd that a letter written in purely legalese terms receives a reply that is mainly hand-waving and pointless in the remarks that are made (as if all the details given by Brave/Eich weren't already known). Doesn't strike me as particularly brilliant, but IANAL etc.

I also wonder how long until Brendan Eich is just "Brendan Eich" and not "Mozilla former CEO". I can't imagine Mozilla is very happy with being associated with a competitor, especially in a situation like this.

<comment><USER25> Its a fact that he was the former CEO of Mozilla, regardless of what you think of his or Mozilla's actions. How can they stop him from correctly representing his past?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > It is the rich and self-righteous, who want to tell everyone else what they > can and cannot read and watch and hear

That is a rich vein of irony

</comment><comment><USER27> Brendan Eich just can't seem to catch a break.

<comment><USER28> To the contrary, articles like these are one hell of a break in terms of exposure for Brave.

<comment><USER10> That is certainly true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The headline and post title are misleading. Brave is not an ad-blocking browser. It is an ad-replacing browser. Blocking ads is useful and ethical. Replacing ads to capture revenue is bad and unethical.

<comment><USER16> It's my right to do whatever I want with the bytes I download over http. Do you disagree?

<comment><USER29> I agree. But I think it is unethical to build a business around convincing consumers to replace a content producers' revenue with its own.</comment></comment></comment>


Americans from Both Political Parties Overwhelmingly Support Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/06/06/new-mozilla-poll-americans-political-parties-overwhelmingly-support-net-neutrality/ <comment><USER2> The problem with this sort of poll is that rhetoric, for a huge number of voters, has a much greater impact than facts about issues. Even and especially if they aren't aware this is the case.

This poll reminds me of those ACA polls which concluded overwhelming support by focusing on particular aspects of the Act instead of just coming right out an asking "Obamacare: repeal or keep?" with no preface.

If you truly want to gauge public opinion _as it will matter in election years_ \-- which is pretty much the only way it matters -- you shouldn't define net neutrality and you definitely shouldn't ask a sequence of potentially priming questions. Instead, you should just ask: "Do you support Net Neutrality?" _and nothing else!_

Of course, the results of this survey are still important. But they might not be predictive of how the average person _really feels_ when asked, over a beer, whether we should "keep internet Obamacare" or "let Comcast censor our speech"

<comment><USER3> _" Obamacare: repeal or keep?" with no preface._

Unfortunately, it's not that easy, because if you change Obamacare to the Affordable Care Act, the answer changes.

[http://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/editorial...](http://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/editorialfiles/2013/09/26/FI10863c-release%209-25-13.pdf)

Search "11a"

<comment><USER4> It works on hacker news too:

>Facebook should not be allowed to...

"It is Facebook's business! Don't like it? Go start your own!"

>Comcast should not be allowed to...

"Right on! Stick it to those price gouging monopolists!"

<comment><USER5> Customers have ample alternatives to facebook, and avoidance of that entire product category is not debilitating. Neither are true of comcast's internet services.

<comment><USER6> what is an alternative to facebook (besides abstention, which I agree is viable in this product category)? the network effect is overwhelmingly strong.

<comment><USER7> Depends on how you define the product category. What teenagers used Facebook for 10 years ago, they use Snapchat for today. But what _adults_ used Facebook for 10 years ago, adults still use Facebook for today.

<comment><USER8> Snapchat didn't exist 10 years ago, so I don't see your point.

<comment><USER7> I was answering the parent's question: if by "alternative to Facebook" you mean that you want the thing that made teenagers use Facebook in 2007, then the answer is that Snapchat is a viable Facebook... somehow. (I'm not too clear on how exactly myself, but it seems to work for them.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I oppose net neutrality regulation. In principle, I don't think there's anything wrong with an ISP prioritizing certain kinds of traffic over others, so long as it does not have an anti-competitive effect.

For example, I don't see how Netflix paying Comcast to zero-rate Netflix traffic is fundamentally different from Amazon contracting with mail carriers to subsidize the cost of shipping for Amazon purchases, or even -- to use an example another commenter made -- an appliance manufacturer contracting with electrical utilities to subsidize the cost of electricity used by their appliances. So long as Comcast makes its zero-rating program available to all content providers -- including their own -- on reasonable and non- discriminatory terms, I don't think there are any competition issues.

I've heard people argue that zero-rating makes it harder for smaller content providers to compete, since they won't have the resources to subsidize their customers' traffic. As I said in another comment, that's just the nature of business. Being big affords you certain advantages, like economies of scale. This makes it easier to compete on price. Smaller companies have to compete in other ways.

In my view, the real problem with the telecom industry in the United States is a lack of competition [0], a problem caused at least in part by municipal [1] and state [2] governments. With more competition, net neutrality would be a non-issue. Consumers would just stop using ISPs that unfairly discriminate between traffic.

[0] [http://www.nationalreview.com/article/410353/net- neutrality-...](http://www.nationalreview.com/article/410353/net-neutrality- already-obsolete-michael-hendrix)

[1] [https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on- ju...](https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-just-cable- companies-and-blame-local-government-for-dismal-broadband-competition/)

[2] [http://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband- roadblock...](http://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks- by-state/)

<comment><USER10> > For example, I don't see how Netflix paying Comcast to zero-rate Netflix > traffic is fundamentally different from Amazon contracting with mail > carriers to subsidize the cost of shipping for Amazon purchases

Two things:

1) Net neutrality is about not slowing down transit of all other packages (that don't get paid extra for)

2) Your comparison is flawed. Comcast isn't the mail carrier, Comcast is the (only) road. If Amazon makes a deal with a CDN (if they didn't have their own) or any other middle-man service on the net, that isn't an issue, nor related to net neutrality at all.

<comment><USER11> (1) Sure. Pay more for mail and it goes faster. Amazon helps gets that increase in speed subsidized.

(2) Generally incorrect.

<comment><USER10> 1) First off, the comparison like I said is flawed, but just to play ball: Other peoples mail doesn't get slowed by you paying for premium shipping.

2) Do you care to expand on that with reasoning or logic?

<comment><USER11> (1) They most certainly are slowed down. Mail services have limited bandwidth (e.g. Christmas), and higher priority package can and do displace low priority ones.

(2) Usually ISPs don't have a monopoly.

<comment><USER10> 1) Which is either where the comparison gets accurate to bandwidth without net neutrality, or breaks as a comparison with net neutrality, because then it's FIFO regardless of which service/delivery network.

2) When you say usually, do you mean globally or in the US where we're discussing net neutrality? Because there most certainly usually is a local monopoly.

<comment><USER11> There most certainly is not.

100% of all developed US census blocks have at least two broadband providers.

[https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-344499A1.p...](https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-344499A1.pdf)

<comment><USER10> > There most certainly is not.

> 100% of all developed US census blocks have at least two broadband > providers.

That's false going by your own source. Broadband requires 25Mbps/3Mbps [1] (even if I personally think even that's low), and 58% percent of _developed_ census blocks lack choice there, of which 21% can't even get it.

The truth remains that if you want broadband, you're in a majority of cases locked to a local monopoly. This is what net neutrality fixes. Until local monopolies can be dealt with at least.

[1] [https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/broadband- progr...](https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/broadband-progress- reports/2015-broadband-progress-report)

<comment><USER11> Hm, looks like the definition of high speed internet changed in 2015. (Since we need all that bandwidth to download crap ads.)

In any case, most census districts with high-speed internet have multiple providers.

<comment><USER10> > In any case, most census districts with high-speed internet have multiple > providers.

Nice cherry picking. So screw those other 37% that live under ISP monopolies?

Are you still denying that local monopolies is a real problem?

<comment><USER12> They should have updated the speeds considered "broadband" but by definition, you'll always have a portion of the population lagging behind any standard that's defined as "what 80% of the population had access to"

<comment><USER10> Avoided the question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Who, when asked, wouldn't support "Net Neutrality?"

It _sounds_ like something everyone should be for.."hey, Net Neutrality hell yeah and we shouldn't club baby seals either!"

As always, its the policies that really matter...having a catchy must-be-for- it-for-virtue-signaling moniker hardly explains what going on in the back rooms where the legislation is being written.

It's like the "Affordable Care Act"...who doesn't want affordable-fucking- care?

We are all currently learning, however, that this "care" is hardly that and "affordable" is nowhere in sight.

<comment><USER14> > It's like the "Affordable Care Act"...who doesn't want affordable-fucking- > care? We are all currently learning, however, that this "care" is hardly > that and "affordable" is nowhere in sight

The polls show the opposite of what you're claiming, though. If they ask people whether they support ACA by name, the result is lower than when they ask whether they support specific provisions and programs that together add up to ACA.

<comment><USER13> Probably because "ACA" triggers the words "Obamacare" in most peoples minds, right?

<comment><USER14> Probably because ACA/Obamacare has been specifically targeted by political ads and in the media by name. So many people don't really know what it _does_ , but they do know that it's bad for some reason or the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nothing really new here, much of what the government has been doing for at least the last 25 years is unpopular with not only a majority of people, but a majority of both democrats and republicans.

What is s surprising is that, in many ways, the last 4 presidents all ran on a "change" message and have been unsuccessful at changing many of the things that both sides agree needs changing.

Why is a deeper discussion, with plenty of blame, but the best way to summarize it, might just be to call it a bad marriage, where two people can no longer give the other side the benefit of the doubt in conversation, so everything being said sounds like personal attacks.

<comment><USER16> Many Americans don't understand how their government works -- you can't expect a president to be able to change things on their own. I agree with former Supreme Court Justice Souter's criticism here of civic education in this country: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWcVtWennr0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWcVtWennr0). Schools and the media ought to focus less on the office of the president and more on the actual operation of the government, including the behavior of our representatives in Congress.

<comment><USER17> > _you can 't expect a president to be able to change things on their own._

But you should expect them to at least talk about the really important issues, and to use their media spotlight to put pressure on whoever is keeping these sort of bipartisan changes from happening. I don't see any recent American presidents doing that though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder what the results would be if it were phrased:

"Do you think the government should make it illegal for a cell phone company to allow it's customers to stream unlimited music and movies from Netflix and Spotify with no data charges?"

"Do you think the government should make it illegal for an Internet service company to willingly partner with a content provider to provide faster service for that content?"

<comment><USER19> Good point. When voters are introduced to net neutrality the phrasing of the definition isn't going to be as clear as "Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers providing consumer connection to the Internet should treat all data on the internet the same, not giving specific advantages or penalties in access by user, content, website, platform, or application." It seems more difficult to be against net neutrality when it's defined like this.

If people only get informed about the net neutrality issue from TV advertisements made by ISPs then the results will be a lot different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm skeptical that most people have sufficient information upon which to make a decision. They just like the way it sounds.

Here's the definition they provided:

> "Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers providing > consumer connection to the Internet should treat all data on the internet > the same, not giving specific advantages or penalties in access by user, > content, website, platform, or application."

Doesn't this seem like it makes any sort of QOS prioritization impossible? What if an ISP wanted to prioritize all real time traffic (voip, videogames, streaming video)?

<comment><USER21> > What if an ISP wanted to prioritize all real time traffic (voip, videogames, > streaming video)?

Then they should increase bandwidth in their backbone or reduce latency for everyone.

All that prioritizing real time traffic means is the ISP gets to judge what is important on the wire and what isn't, rather than the consumer. I don't want my ISP going anywhere near my packets.- or anyone, really - except for whoever I am sending them to. All they need to know is the destination address and the fastest way to get it there.

If there were competition in ISPs, you could reasonably argue that ISP's being given sovereignty over the traffic on their lines would be acceptable. But as long as Internet service in the US is the domain of very few regional monopolies, they have too much power over the consumer to be able to mess with such critical infrastructure for their own gain.

<comment><USER22> I mean sure, theoretically sounds good, in practice you would _not_ want to give up the myriad QOS instruments that are already in place. They make your internet usage feel faster with very little downside.

Absolutely, the Net Neutrality rules need to be in place, but your parent commentor is right when he says it's not going to be a trivial thing to define.

<comment><USER23> What kind of QOS adjustments would be made impossible by assuming the above definition of net neutrality?

Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER24> Analyzing the traffic to optimize the service.

\- With p=0.86 this UDP stream looks like a VoIP traffic and the least latency route would be over this peer.

\- And this TCP connection is to the YouTube video servers. No matter what, it's better not route through this peer, because for only $deityName knows why but it doesn't work well and customers complain about random buffering.

\- And that is BitTorrent traffic - better feed that info_hash and so the locally-running cache would prefetch the data. Okay, that's probably not possible in the US, lol, but this simple trick significatly lowered upstream utilization, making network perform better for everyone.

That's how it works in a "good ISP" scenario. There's a "bad ISP" scenario though. There, NN prevents those:

\- This is Netflix traffic and customer'd better pay for our cable if they want 4K. Shape this down to 5Mbps. Not like that customer has any choice of ISPs in their area.

\- That's VoIP and and user's better burn minutes on our telephony services. Add randomized 1-5% packet drop.

\- That's BitTorrent and we know it's only for pirates. Block the traffic, no Debian ISOs for you buddy.

So, as far as I get it, NN is unnecessary or even harmful where there's a significant competition (like, no less than 4-5 different ISPs), and may be helpful in case of mono- and duopolies.

<comment><USER25> All of that is a terrible idea, as you still suddenly have idiosynratic behaviour of some traffic streams, with some VoIP protocols working on some providers, stuttering on others, what have you ... just an unreliable, undebuggable mess that makes innovation essentially impossible (because now you need to upgrade/reconfigure all ISPs' routers to introduce a new VoIP protocol, say ... which in practice means that you can't).

If you want to do QoS, you have to do it using a standardized mechanism (such as the qos header in IP) and let the customer control which data streams they want prioritized.

<comment><USER24> Maybe it is, would we've lived in a world of standards being developed, implemented and followed and users having good understanding about their computer systems and networking concepts.

Have you ever saw HLS or DASH HTTPS traffic tagged distinctively from bulk .iso downloads, and all that being distinct from page loads? Does your VoIP client uses DSCP field? Which level does it set? What ISP is to make if some "smart" client marks all their traffic as "critical"? And more importantly - how that's supposed to even work across multiple ASes?

Heuristics is the only way it can be made work in the real world scenarios.

That, or "sorry, we understand that your MMORPG lags terribly since the last week but we can't even try to help you" ISP support replies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Our problem is that Net Neutrality just isn't a big enough issue. Even if almost 100% of the people support it, not enough of them will change their vote on its account.

American democracy is broken because we're always only given two choices. You're never allowed to vote for someone who is going to represent everything you believe in.

Things could be different. If we had a system in which you could vote for whomever you want (regardless of where they're from) and that person had voting power in the legislature that was proportional to the share of votes they got, then the laws we would get would actually reflect the will of the people.

<comment><USER27> That seems problematic. The person whose views most closely match my own is me. If I can vote for literally _anyone_ and it works out the same, then I'd vote for me, presumably everyone else would vote for themselves, and you'd have a weird version of direct democracy.

<comment><USER6> I don't think it's problematic. The duopoly system forces a large number of voters into "lesser evil" stances, or at least forces them to narrowly focus on their one pet issue and vote for candidates based only on that issue.

a system with more choices has more opportunities to find candidates that you agree with on multiple dimensions of policy, as well as hopefully finding more candidates that you can respect as human beings.

the post you're responding to is proposing a kind of non-geographically constrained proportionally allocated representational democracy. so, instead of voting for just one of the 2 candidates in your congressional district (which is likely gerrymandered anyway) you can vote for anyone in the country and that person's voting power in congress is proportional to their popular vote count. that's not dissimilar to a lot of corporate governance systems (voting shares of common stock widely distributed).

<comment><USER27> I'm not sure how this addresses my objection. Sure, more choices means more opportunities to find candidates who match me perfectly. And if you allow literally anyone then that candidate is me. So you might as well not elect candidates at all, just give every citizen a vote in the legislature instead.

<comment><USER6> the way it addresses your objection is that the congressional voting power is proportional to popular vote received.

unstated in the OP, but my supposition (reasonable, I hope), is that there will still be a limited number of congressional seats so that candidates below a certain popular vote threshold will have 0 representational power. in that case it is still in the best interests of voters to vote for someone who is likely to clear the threshold and not throw their vote away by voting for a perfect ideological match (i.e. themselves).

this seems fairly elegant to me except that it might lead to a neglect of the provincial concerns of low population density areas (which was a major concern of the founders), but on the plus side, those rural voters can at least find an ideological match even if they don't find someone to represent their geographic interests.

<comment><USER27> If there was some minimum threshold, then yes, my objection goes away. But that wasn't stated.

<comment><USER26> I think there are plenty of possible variations. I've been thinking that representatives above a certain threshold actually get seats in the legislature and committee positions, etc. But any one person would have the freedom to vote on every piece of legislation (if technically possible) if they wanted.

In all likelihood, a few people would get most of the votes, because they're competing for attention from a national audience. Therefore, it is possible that local issues get marginalized, so I think it would be necessary to give people multiple votes. That way they can split their vote and choose both national candidates and local candidates.

We can debate all these details when we get to the constitutional convention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't know much about statistics, but is the sample size of 1000 people surveyed here significant enough to be drawing conclusions from? It feels small to me, would anyone with a stronger background in this area care to comment?

<comment><USER29> 1000 is enough for this case.

Depends on how "accurate" you want to measure a ratio. Here the ratio is the percentage of Americans that support net neutrality.

In this case, sample size is 1000, estimated ratio is 76%, the 95% confidence interval is 76% +/\- 2.65%, which means if you repeat this survey again, you have a 95% chance that new estimated ratio is within 76% +/\- 2.65%.

Edit: 99% confidence interval is 76% +/\- 3.48%

<comment><USER30> Well, it depends on where the 1000 people are drawn from as well. Your assumptions only hold if for both the original survey and the repeat, the pool of people being surveyed are an accurate sample of all of the United States.

<comment><USER29> Good point. On the other hand, the confidence interval I provided is correct as long as the original survey and the repeat are sampled in the same way (regardless whether it is un-biased sampling or not)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I am from India and I am closely aware of the wave that started with comedy groups in youtube of youtube and ended up defeating facebook's internet.org. I am little ambivalent about internet.org, but ended up converting 2 people to support internet.org. The common complaint here is this will make unpaid sites slow. This is partially borrowed by netflix event. They use "net neutrality" term, which most of the people have no idea what it means, and they get their entire idea from watching videos which shows faster and slower pipe. On asking them, for whom internet.org specifically is bad, they just don't have anything to say. I have to make them understand that this fight is not about a thing that will make their internet slow. The whole point of a million mails sent is not great care for the internet, but a feel good protest. They would have a much greater effect if they protested for better speeds for local websites, which kind of sucks more in India than one would expect. People are not very sad for seconds of delay, but are more concerned that some company will use faster lane to reduce delay by 10ms-20ms, which is of no use for company in a country which can tolerate very slow sites.

Anyways, my point here is this term sound more of a fundamental characteristic of internet that we are loosing, than it is. The commonly envisioned future that we have to pay by services is not happening. Until that, we have far more important thing to protest against. I personally think better privacy and less data processing by machines is what we should protest for more often.

</comment><comment><USER32> I support it, but only partially and with caveats.

If we are going to regulate service providers then why not limit what content providers can do as well? Why should they get a completely free ride?

Here is that NN results in. Permanent protection from competition for internet providers as long as they agree to not be too profitable. In return for having their rates called into question and rate increases reviewed they are protected from having anyone being able to undercut them because those same would be subject to the same rates and rules.

Which means, what you got now is what you will have for a long time. NN does not guarantee, in fact it slows, the chance for higher speeds because there won't be competition to deliver such to you.

So those are my caveats. I would like to see additional pricing for content providers limited but not at the point they can free ride the net. We are just adding dollars to the content people's wallets and for what? So we can feel good about sticking it to Comcast (which I don't use).

This didn't work for railroads or long distance, it took us a century for the former and nearly half for the latter to fix

<comment><USER25> Hu? How does NN limit rates, or competition, and how do content providers "free ride the net"?!?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think similar surveys like cheaper healthcare, healthier food, lesser college tuitions, better salaries and lower rents will also get similar support from both parties. Everyone like good stuff for them and bad effects can be pushed to other people/state/country and so on.

</comment><comment><USER34> Politicians don't care what their constituents want. Americans overwhelmingly support basic gun-control laws, access to legal abortion, single-payer healthcare, and lots of other issues. Politicians only care about what their lobbyists and financial donors tell them to care about. That's the sad truth. We created this perverse system, so we can reform it when we choose. The only way to reverse this is to make elections publicly funded and reform campaign finance.

<comment><USER35> It's about the _manufactured perception_ and not the material reality.

Who manufactures this perception? Anyone who knows how to tell a good story...

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Yeah, we want these government sponsored & subsidized monopolies to stay the hell out of our packets.

Ajit Pai knows this, he just doesn't care.

</comment><comment><USER37> The results are contradictory and highlight technical illiteracy of the respondents.

Another conclusion: Americans trust ISPs to protect access to the internet more than they do any branch of government.

These issues are complicated and susceptible to populist whims. It's a good thing America is not a direct democracy.

</comment><comment> gm-conspiracy In America, only two political parties?

<comment><USER38> (I'm not sure if your comment was genuinely asking about the number of political parties in the U.S., or sarcastically remarking on the fact that there's only effectively two parties)

While there are technically more than two political parties, the vast majority of Americans support one of the two major parties - the GOP (a.k.a. Republicans), and the Democrats. Between them, these parties more-or-less represent most of the range of political discussion and ideology in the U.S. The next-largest party is generally considered to be the Libertarians.

Thus, while the statement "Americans from both political parties" may contain a technical inaccuracy, as there are technically more than two parties, it's a useful shorthand for "Typical Americans, regardless of political affiliation"

As for why there's only two major political parties in the U.S., it's likely the result of most elections being simple plurality (a.k.a. first-past-the- post). This heavily encourages potential candidates to compromise and coalesce until there's only two candidates, to avoid the spoiler effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> And just to show how disconnected our government is, the Democrats barely support it, and the Republicans outright do not support it.

Ridiculous. But hey, continue not voting for a third party. That will sure fix things.

<comment><USER40> I love the "throwing your vote away" argument. Sorry guys, by voting for the big two, YOU are the one throwing it away. Third party support growth is a great indicator of the public's desire for real change. So what if you lose? You're voting to express your opinion, not to win.

<comment><USER41> > So what if you lose? You're voting to express your opinion, not to win.

If I want to "express my opinion", I'll write an essay. Voting—which is by secret ballot—is poor for expressing opinions. It's to participate in choice of political leadership or (in the case of initiatives and referenda) concrete policy.

In that light, winning—that is, getting the best outcome attainable in terms of leader or policy chosen—is more important than expressing opinion.

Now, ideally, the electoral system would aggregate opinions well such that there would be nomdofferenve between optimizing for outcome and optimizing for accurate expression of opinion. But you go into the ballot box with the voting system you have, not the voting system you wish you had.

<comment><USER40> That's trying to influence people, not express an opinion on policy or candidates up for consideration. Winning isn't as important is being right, in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I recall the GOP publishing their support for Net Neutrality in a previous election cycle platform and then abruptly changing it within a week to the opposite.

Google is failing me in finding that original platform.

</comment><comment><USER43> No one is going to lose an election for not supporting net-neutrality.

<comment><USER44> Right, but they could lose a lot of campaign funding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> They obviously would. It gives them more control over the internet.

</comment><comment><USER46> Satisfied my intellectual curiosity for the day ...

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm surprised that only one person here has mentioned campaign finance as the true issue here -- and they were downvoted.

As horsecaptin noted on this thread, "No one is going to lose an election for not supporting net-neutrality."

They do stand to lose serious campaign funding, however. Congressmen and Senators spend a majority of their time raising funds for their campaigns. If it weren't so important to them, they wouldn't. House representatives -- incumbents, no less -- need to raise about $20,000 a week to hold onto their positions, and Senators about $10,000.

In 2014, the top four cable providers spent twice as much on campaign "donations" than the top five pharmaceutical companies. I'm not sure about 2016 but imagine it was similar.

\--- Some links

How Much Money Big Cable Gave the Politicians Who Oversee the Internet [2014]

[http://gizmodo.com/how-much-money-big-cable-gave-the- politic...](http://gizmodo.com/how-much-money-big-cable-gave-the-politicians- who-overs-1657002442)

House Rep. Pushing To Set Back Online Privacy Rakes In Industry Funds

[http://www.vocativ.com/415350/house-rep-pushing-to-set- back-...](http://www.vocativ.com/415350/house-rep-pushing-to-set-back-online- privacy-rakes-in-industry-funds/)

The Campaign Cash That Can Kill the Open Internet [2015] All but two of the 31 co-sponsors of a House bill to kill net neutrality received thousands from telecoms in just the last election.

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-campaign-cash-that-can- kill...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-campaign-cash-that-can-kill-the- open-internet)

Half of Anti-Net Neutrality Comments From "Shadowy" Koch Bros. Group

[http://gizmodo.com/half-of-anti-net-neutrality-comments- came...](http://gizmodo.com/half-of-anti-net-neutrality-comments-came-from- shadowy-1672248771)

Koch-affiliated astroturfers call Net Neutrality "Marxist" [2014]

[http://boingboing.net/2014/08/26/koch-affiliated- astroturfer...](http://boingboing.net/2014/08/26/koch-affiliated- astroturfers-c.html)

Vote correlation: Internet privacy resolution and telecom contributions

[https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/03/vote-correlation- in...](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/03/vote-correlation-internet- privacy-res/)

The 265 members of Congress who sold you out to ISPs, and how much it cost to buy them

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc- isp...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp-web- browsing-privacy-fire-sale)

Internet Firms Are Far Behind Cable Companies in Political Donations

[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/upshot/internet-firms- are...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/upshot/internet-firms-are-far- behind-cable-companies-in-political-donations.html) [2014]

The Humiliating Fundraising Existence of a Member of Congress [2014]

[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/the- hum...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/the-humiliating- fundraising-existence-of-a-member-of-congress/277227/)

Are members of Congress becoming telemarketers?

[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-are-members-of- congre...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-are-members-of-congress- becoming-telemarketers/)

How much time do politicians spend fundraising?

[https://www.quora.com/How-much-time-do-politicians-spend- fun...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-time-do-politicians-spend-fundraising)

</comment><comment><USER47> Net neutrality is bad for the market. What people think they want does not supercede decades of economics.

Regulating ISPs will do irreparable damage to the web, and it could be a decade or more before the average consumer can afford to be a part of a meshnet internet.

Y'all just don't understand the level of manipulation happening. Point at the comcast boogieman (and rightfully so, tbh) as they strip ISPs of their liberties and force a certain business model on them.

I have been somewhat disappointed with my fellow citizens before, and there's always been a certain kinship between Americans, but this is just too far.

I guess we will learn econ 101 the hard way.

</comment><comment><USER48> I don't understand why anyone would support Net Neutrality.

What's the difference between forcing a TV cable provider to provide all channels, forcing Netflix to provide all movies, forcing Spotify to provide all albums, forcing Amazon to sell all products, forcing Fedex to ship anywhere, forcing libraries to carry all books, forcing AT&T to let me call anyone (at no additional cost), and forcing Comcast to provide all websites?

What if some ISP build their own protocol, are they subject to Net Neutrality's regulations? Why?

Why prevent content providers from working with ISPs to better distribute their content? How is it different than allowing stores to associate with arbitrary shipping companies?

<comment><USER49> First, bandwidth is not scarce in the same way that those other products you mentioned are. Channels must be produced and licensed, as must music. Products must be bought/warehoused/shipped. Internet bandwidth is simply a function of available infrastructure, infrastructure the ISPs have in abundance and are seeking to artificially limit to gouge customers.

Second, TV channels are not an essential service, nor is music, nor is Amazon. Internet access most assuredly is in the 21st century.

Third, cable is not the only source of media, Spotify is not the only source of music, and amazon is not the only source of products. In the US ISPs are often monopolies.

A better analogy IMO is that letting ISPs discriminate how users utilize their bandwidth is like letting electrical utilities say that if you buy Whirpool appliances it won't count against your electric bill, because they have a deal with Whirlpool. Or perhaps even more accurate, you're forced to buy the electrical company's appliances, period, or else incur penalties. It decreases consumer choice and competition, and is actually anti-business and anti- capitalist despite the rhetoric to the contrary.

<comment><USER48> I recognize that net neutrality makes sense when the infrastructure is regulated, funded or subsidized with public money. Perhaps that's true in most places and that's why so many people believe it's a necessity. I can understand that.

Let's imagine a different scenario. I put a satellite in orbit and offer internet access to people. No government subsidies, no monopoly. Should I be free to discriminate and only offer the websites I want?

<comment><USER49> Is your satellite the only source of internet access for a given region? Are you going to actively lobby and sue to prevent municipalities and other companies from building their own competing satellites?

If the answer to both of those is no then sure, discriminate away! If people don't like your offerings they can go elsewhere, or can build their own. But the big ISPs, at least here in America, would answer "yes" to both and have long, well-documented histories to that effect.

<comment><USER48> Is the goal net neutrality or is the goal to get rid of ISP monopolies?

<comment><USER49> The goal is net neutrality. However at present the ISP monopolies are abusing their position to prevent it so that they remain free from regulation and have captive markets to exploit. Given their legally binding fiduciary duty to their shareholders and the current lack of competition, we can hardly expect different behavior from them. Either we need an infusion of competition, or we force them to "play nice" as justified by their position. At present either option requires some form of governmental regulation aka net neutrality.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Since SVN revision r4027 source code is personally insulting me (2008) - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=477454 <comment><USER2> Consider the amount of effort collectively spent by people in that thread trying to justify not spending the time to modify a single line of code, where the fix is just to substitute in any other meaningless string placeholder. Any single person involved could have applied the fix in several orders of magnitude less time than they spent typing a reply.

I mostly skimmed the inane discussion, but I think at one point someone was trying to make the argument "if we're going to fix this, we also have to fix every occurrence of profanity within the entire Debian codebase"?

Given that was 12 years ago, it would be interesting to hear the same people's current reactions to their response at the time.

<comment><USER3> >where the fix is just to substitute in any other meaningless string placeholder. [...] I mostly skimmed the inane discussion,

You shouldn't have skipped the part where they talked about how the fix was not just that. (Though I don't think the actual fix merited the amount of bikeshedding it got either.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I clicked on the link thinking it would be someone being offended over nothing as tends to be my stance. But no, that is too far. I wonder what the culture is like such that anyone thought committing that, with your name on the commit, was a good idea.

<comment><USER5> And then the replies defending the idea of not changing it.

I am at a loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The day I lost respect for Lennart Poettering, was when a user reported a bug[0] that starting pulseaudio (which he authored) gave a vulgar error message and his response was simply "Sorry, but please don't waste my time, will you?"[1].

It wasn't as if the user was doing anything exotic, just opening it:

      $ pulseaudio
      W: main.c: D-Bus name org.pulseaudio.Server already taken. Weird shit!

In the end Ubuntu carried a patch specifically to remove it. I thought it was a real shame he thought that it was both appropriate to do in the first place, and acceptable to be that dismissive to a polite bug report.

Doesn't surprise me he later won a Pwnie award[2] for his bad handling of bugs, specifically security. I'd recommend giving them a read!

[0] [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/44...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/444400)

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20101129202632/http://pulseaudio...](https://web.archive.org/web/20101129202632/http://pulseaudio.org/ticket/672)

[2] [https://pwnies.com/archive/2017/winners/#lamestvendor](https://pwnies.com/archive/2017/winners/#lamestvendor)

</comment><comment><USER7> While I'm not familiar with any of the people involved, it's very puzzling to me to see some people actively oppose removing such blatant personal insults. Surely changing one string in a package shouldn't be a challenge to Debian maintainers?

<comment><USER8> I would have changed it. That said, I get where (presumably) the reluctance to change it comes from. It means diverging from upstream and introducing patches. When upstream changes, your patches fail, the package breaks. It's introducing frailty for non-technical correctness, which is a bit harder to justify for many engineers I know than frailty for technical correctness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> See also: Gentoo bug #124595 '"quodlibet" package is useless'

[https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124595](https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124595)

<comment><USER3> I don't think that one is particularly relevant. The quodlibet author is right to complain there.

Distro users should be reporting bugs in the distro bug tracker, and the distro package maintainer should be the one to surface these to the author, or in that specific case, let it rot because there's no maintainer.

<comment><USER9> It's completely relevant. The original Debian issue was the same general thing, with the distro packaging QL alongside an incompatible gstreamer leading to bug reports for the dev: [https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=421167#15](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=421167#15)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there some especially compelling reason to dredge up a decade-old petty flamewar? Does anyone believe doing so would produce some interesting discourse or enlightenment?

<comment> compiler-guy Culturally this is very interesting to me. So here is one vote that is glad it showed up again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is (2008).

</comment><comment><USER12> The best part of this thread (from a yak shaving nerd perspective) is joeyh's breakdown of profanity filtered for personal insult in the Debian changelog: [https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=477454#101](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=477454#101)

"""

Now that this bug has been brought to my attention, I cannot help myself. I have to grep Debian changelogs for profanity, filter for profanity that includes personal insults, and wonder why these packages reached the archive w/o RC bug reports being filed:

"""

<comment><USER13> I still don't understand where the personal insults are.

"The fucked up system release": no personal insult

"Changed debian/watch to match with the new fucking Sourceforge Interface. Sourceforge sucks!": no personal insult

and so on.

The only ones are possibly "thanks Gerfried Fucks" and "The upstream author is kind of a lazy bastard".

Still, what is that exercise supposed to mean for that bug?

<comment><USER14> > \+ file:///Sebastian/Droge/please/choke/on/a/bucket/of/cocks", "")

I'm pretty sure that if someone did that to any of several people I know, they'd find out that not all nerds are soft.

<comment><USER13> That's obvious,I was talking about Joey Hess and his "there are so many personal insults in other packages, we can't do anything about it" examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This really shines a bad light on some of these Debian maintainers. Everyone spending all that time arguing about that in dozens of posts instead of just fixing it and moving on.

</comment><comment><USER16> Heh that's pretty funny.

</comment><comment><USER17> 2008!</comment>


Show HN: A small, functional state management library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/herber/nation? <comment><USER2> I always click on these and try to find a state management to use with React or similar frameworks, because Redux is horrible and the most famous alternatives are even worse.

To enlight people like me who are going to click this, I must say I had a good experience with [https://github.com/andrejewski/raj](https://github.com/andrejewski/raj).

<comment><AUTHOR> I had the same problem you did. That's why I built nation - it's my ideal solution for state management.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> When people say "immutable" they're actually meaning "functional data structures", right? Not JavaScript objects which you are prevented from mutating.

But here and in many other similar libraries it seems that "immutable" actually hold the second meaning.</comment>


Profile in Computational Imagination: Tim Hopper - <AUTHOR> http://computationalimagination.com/interview_tim_hopper.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Interviewer here: Among other good insights about math and software development, Tim really advocates for productivity and life quality benefits of distributed software development and data science teams.

He discusses the tool stack that enables productive remote development in his experience and how it is not much different than the communication tools used by in-person teams.</comment>


Alan Cox leaves Linux and Intel - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/111104121194250082892/posts/KW3TdRYwjr9 <comment><USER2> I liked it how his profile image[1] is a QR code for his site[2] and also resembles him.[3]

[1] [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-DGzr5UFEIXM/AAAAAAAAAAI/A...](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-DGzr5UFEIXM/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAADGY/sfJNTdY6ph8/s250-c-k/photo.jpg)

[2] <http://goo.gl/BhXmc>

[3] <http://goo.gl/w5HNx>

<comment><USER3> It's Russ Cox's work.

Background: <http://research.swtch.com/field>

Implementation: <http://research.swtch.com/qart>. It's all written in Go, btw.

Running code, so you can try it on yourself: <http://research.swtch.com/qr/draw>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No one inspired me to learn to code more than AC, have a good time with your family and thanks for everything.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thank you for all your time and hard work Alan. I hope we see you back some time in the future. Enjoy your extra family time :)

<comment><USER6> Thank you, AC!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A huge thank you to Alan for all his work over the years. Like quite a few others who ran linux back in the _old_ 2.2/2.4 days, the -ac kernels where the place to be.

I'm reminded of the Derek Silvers article (<http://sivers.org/ff>) on the importance of the second guy to a movement.

While I know that Alan wasn't the actual second developer to participate in Linux, he sure seemed that way to me and quite a few others. His work was as the "gatherer of patches" in the pre-bitkeeper days was unparalleled. I don't think Linux could have prospered without his assistance.

</comment><comment><USER3> "for a bit" lacking in the title makes all the difference.

<comment><USER8> > I may be back at some point in the future - who knows.

This makes it sound less certain that this is only "for a bit."

<comment><USER9> or a binary digit

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Back in the (2.1.x) day it seemed like I was running ac kernels more often than not. Nowadays though, I've been away from the kernel world for so long that I don't even know how big of a deal this is. Anyone care to chime in?

<comment><USER11> Not a very big deal, though I'm sad he has a family crisis. The only entry in MAINTAINERS left for Alan is drivers/tty/serial. He's been doing some kernel bugzilla triage too, that'll be missed.

<comment><USER12> There's more, this must be a disappointment to every Poulsbo user out there, he was getting that driver in shape last year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5103271> :)

edit: I didn't mean to post this for karma or hard feelings; see my reply to daeken at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5109903> :)

<comment><USER14> While it sucks that you posted this and it didn't end up frontpaged (we all love karma), there's no good reason to link it here. When a dupe happens, threads are linked not to 'give credit' or something like that, but to show people conversations that they missed around the topic; in this case, there are none.

<comment><USER13> To be honest, I don't mind the karma much (as you can see, I don't have much, don't comment or post much, and mostly lurk around here).

I only was curious that it didn't get any attention when I posted it yesterday, and I was wondering why (Time of posting? People don't care about Alan Cox? Was there some obvious joke or prank that I was missing?).

I'd seen old-thread links posted before, so I thought this was a standard thing to do. But your point (of linking only to relevant discussion) makes perfect sense. Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In case anyone gets confused between the two like I sometimes do, Alan Cox (Linux Kernel hacker) is not Russ Cox (Go language & Plan 9 from User Space hacker).

</comment><comment><USER16> Very sorry to hear this and I genuinely hope that the canonical neckbeard's family situation improves.

<comment><USER17> Canonical? Might want to rephrase that. ;)

<comment><USER18> What about Alan Cox isn't canonical neckbeard?

<comment><USER19> His employer.

<comment><USER20> I believe the joke is about him complaining about Fedora, then switching to Ubuntu and now announcing that he's leaving Linux world a day later because of Canonical.

See his last few posts <https://plus.google.com/111104121194250082892/posts>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Alan left Linux for a few years before, to do his MBA, and he came back :-)

<http://kerneltrap.org/node/759>

</comment><comment><USER22> I think Linus's asshole-ness is probably key to Linux's success. He ought to be considered the world's leading expert on running an open source project, after all.

I remember running your patched kernels circa 2000. Thanks for your hard work.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why do people direct comments at AC assuming he will read them here? Isn't that a little self-centered? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to leave such comments at the original post?

</comment><comment><USER24> Brilliant guy.

</comment><comment><USER25> Thanks for your great work for linux and open source software,Alan Cox.</comment>


Show HN: I hope you are getting fed up with speed readers for browser - <AUTHOR>

Now, it's mobile's turn. Here's the speed reader for iPhone and iPad with pocket integration.
https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/id846709169?mt=8
Give it a try, i think you won't be disappointed. Feedback/suggestions are highly appreciated. <comment><USER2> I'm on android - are there similar apps for that?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's this one for android - [https://github.com/OnlyInAmerica/OpenSpritz- Android](https://github.com/OnlyInAmerica/OpenSpritz-Android)

It doesn't support web pages, its mostly for ebooks (epubs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> please don't use HN exclusively for advertising =[

<comment><USER4> That's a little unfair. Many interesting and useful projects / apps have been launched on HN.</comment></comment>


You're a little company, now act like one - <AUTHOR> http://blog.asmartbear.com/youre-a-little-company-now-act-like-one.html

<comment><USER2> Nice article, I've been struggling with writing copy for a new side project, and keep writing down the big-businness speak, then removing it 'cause it just feels so fake.</comment>